Europa Universalis III demo on Gamespot in about an hour...

[Bokonon]

The game comes out in a week, but for those interested in trying it out (or old-timers looking to see if this installment is any good), you can get the good stuff at GameSpot... Soonish.

These are the only notes on the demo:

In the single-player demo, you can play select tutorial chapters and all the Western nations from 1492 to 1520.

Honestly, the demo alone is probably hours of goodness. I'm excited.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

[Sky]

For subscribers only.

[Bokonon]

Yeah, they didn't mention that on the page :(

I signed up for the free account (which I hate), so I can download it tonight. Probably worth waiting a week for the real thing though.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

[WayAbvPar]

I have heard lots of good things about the previous incarnations. I might have to pick this up when it comes out.

[Sky]

I liked EU2 but really sucked at it. The popups every  2 seconds were nuts so I mostly played as the Iroquois...until Europe showed up and decimated me. It was still a lot of fun, though.

Then Lum blew my mind by linking a story of a guy who dominated the world as the Iroquois. That guy is my hero.

[bignatz]

A few DL-mirrors on the Paradox messageboard.

I want Sienna!

[Bokonon]

I liked EU2 but really sucked at it. The popups every  2 seconds were nuts so I mostly played as the Iroquois...until Europe showed up and decimated me. It was still a lot of fun, though.

Then Lum blew my mind by linking a story of a guy who dominated the world as the Iroquois. That guy is my hero.

Paradox has apparently streamlined the UI big time, so the annoying popups issue should be lessened.

A lot of issues with lower end GPUs (the game requires 128MB and PixeShader 2.0 or it doesn't let you run it at all), and some Vista stuff (known bug that graphics card makersa are fixing, and which Paradox has a workaround for) with the demo.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

[Abel]

128MB ! What it needs that for  :-( ? At last a game I could still play on my antiquated PC I thought ... guess upgrading is inevitable now !

Btw, how it plays ? What are the major changes over previous Paradox games ?

[Bokonon]

Changes are rather numerous. I'd check out the main game forums for that.

Honestly I have no idea why it needs 128MB (the new engine is 3D, but not exactly a workhorse)... Maybe they locked out lower memory cards for support sake? There is a post by the lead dev on the main forums that supporting 64MB GPUs is going to be looked at for patch 1.1.

And so the famous Paradox patching process begins!

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

[Raging Turtle]

FAQ here with info: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=266056

I had no idea this was coming out.  Loved the last one.

[Calantus]

I'm going to download the demo to the laptop, and if it works there I'll go buy it. I just love these kinds of games to putz around in when I don't have access to a more robust machine, but don't have the patience to play them if I have access to an FPS, usually.

[Raging Turtle]

Country list: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=279461

[Sky]

Ah, shit. Probably won't run on the mini. I was thinking of grabbing the demo for lunchtime diversions. Nevermind! Stupid intel GMA crap.

[Raging Turtle]

dammit someone post something about the demo.

[Zar]

I tinkered with it for about an hour last night, before I gave up in frustration about how slowly it ran on my machine.  I played EU2 into the ground, so I am pretty excited about this new one, but it looks like I'll finally have to upgrade my 5 year old computer to play it.  Not really sure what's so demanding about the game that it causes my machine to grind to a halt; the graphics are nothing spectacular, and I can run games like Civ4 and M:TW 2 with no problem.

From what I did see, it seemed very similar to EU2.  A few new concepts like National Ideas and Great People have been thrown in, and the UI looked much improved, but the gameplay hasn't changed overly much.  It didn't give me the "omg have to have it now feeling", so I won't be going out and upgrading my computer just for this game  -- will probably pick it up when I do though.  Playing the demo did give me the jones to play EU2 again though, so I'm content for now.

[Raging Turtle]

Picked this up yesterday. 

Ireland is currently taking over the New World.

[WayAbvPar]

I saw Lum's thoughts on his site...I am gonna wait a bit on this one, methinks.

[Raging Turtle]

The 1.1 patch, which I downloaded as soon as I installed, apparently fixed a number of funky things that I never had to deal with.  Long list of patch notes there.

Another patch or two for certain other things would be nice as well, though.  Spain and Portugal send out explorers/conquistadors almost immediately now, which is annoying if you want to colonize the new world as Burgandy while trying not to get overrun by France, but colonizing goes a bit slower in this game so you won't get too far behind.  Maps are shared with everyone after a set amount of time as well.

Harder for the 1-province countries to take over the world now with the lower troop support per province, especially those without several other small countries to gobble up nearby.  I FINALLY held off Aragon as Navarra, even took a province (by hiring a ton of mercenaries and then going bankrupt one month after I took Barcelona), and then Spain and his buddy Portugal came and kicked my ass. 

The graphics are functional, nothing more, but I disagree with Lum in that I think they're an ok upgrade from EU2. 

[Sky]

I don't understand why they are making 2d games with 3d engines (that suck). Civ4 sucks visually, and it runs like garbage, I still use Civ3 for the laptop.

[Margalis]

2D games built on 3D engines will run faster than 2D games built on 2D engines if you have modern 3D hardware. (And by "modern" I mean "at least a Voodoo 2")

There shouldn't really be any difference visually between a true 2D game and a 2D game done in a 3D engine, other than that a 3D engine can more easily do rotations, transparencies and other graphic effects. For example most modern 2D fighting games are done on 3D engines, inluding Marvel vs. Capcom and Guilty Gear.

As I said, it should actually run faster than the same game done in pure 2D. If Civ4 runs like garbage that is a Civ4 problem, not an engine approach problem. Especially on a PC. On consoles older systems have dedicated hardware and special goodness for 2D, like storing sprites with 4 bit color palette entries that you lose when going to 2D over a 3D engine and have to store each sprite as a texture without any color-palette tricks. On PCs that sort of thing isn't an issue as they've never had any real help for 2D presentation to begin with.